Miksang contemplative photography

Miksang Contemplative Photography

Miksang is the practice of using a camera as a vehicle for awareness. Miksang comes out of the teachings on perception by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan Lama and founder of Shambhala Buddhism in America.

In the University Honors Program sophomore seminar on Miksang, students attempt over the course of a semester to learn to see the world in the milliseconds before anger, happiness, or ignorance gets in the way. In other words, they try to capitalize on the belief that there is a space or a gap between when we first see or experience something, and the moment when we begin to judge it or want it or reject it. This gap is called, in Miksang, the "flash of perception."

The photos you see here are chosen for display by the students who took them. In some ways, the photos are a poor representation because Miksang, like many contemplative practices, is more about the process than the product. But these photos do count, and it is the intention of the students and instructor Miriam Hall to offer them to you so that you can hopefully experience a moment of "flash of perception," or total sudden awareness of reality.